How to Build a Healthy and Joyful Life Through Nutritious Food
By Kate Love
Byron Bay's Pimp My Salad Revolutionises Healthy Eating with Plant-based Salad Toppers and Spreads
Pimp My Salad is a Byron Bay born and based healthy salad topper brand that offers a versatile range of plant-based and gluten-free seeds, sprinkles and spreads. They are committed to inspiring their consumers to live joyful lives through their delicious yet effortless products. Most importantly, they aim to influence and educate on the significance of nutritious food intake and our physical, emotional and mental health to allow us to love life.
I spoke to Byron local Pimp My Salad Founder Olga Plotnikova about her achievements as a business owner, how she balances this with motherhood and her science background.
What inspired you to create Pimp My Salad, and how did your scientific background influence the products you offer?
We always say that, in fact, it was our customers who created Pimp My Salad – we saw that people wanted to add something healthy and exciting in their meals. Our scientific background helped to create nutritionally balanced recipe that is healthy and tasty at the same time. Plus, we are so used to doing research and to experiment, that this was like a fun playground for us!
How do you balance your role as a business owner with your responsibilities as a mother, and what strategies have you found most effective?
It is important to listen yourself and follow your intuition. I love to have a good morning routine including a quick yoga session, breathing, journaling, meditation and sometimes a brief tea ceremony. The best strategy for me is to have 1 hour in the morning for myself before my kids wake up. Also, it is important to ask for help, it could be asking friends to pick up the kids from school, inviting babysitter or having older kids helping you.
You mention the importance of a healthy lifestyle in preventing disease - can you elaborate on this and share some tips for those looking to improve their diet and wellbeing?
We strongly believe that health is affected by our happiness, and how much delicious, healthy food positively impacts our mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. It is good to start with small steps. Have a water with lemon juice in the morning before breakfast. Reducing sugar and adding more greens to the diet.
Introducing easy salads (green leaves + olive oil + our Pimp My Salad Super seeds). Time in nature helps to decompress from screen-time.
What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced while growing Pimp My Salad, and how did you overcome it?
We had many challenges along the way - every step up in the business has its own challenge. And of course, something always goes wrong. For example, recently we have been facing many challenges with logistics and deliveries, and it can really affect the business on a larger scale. So, rather than one big element, it’s been mostly adapting to all the new challenges that are in front of you when you’re levelling up.
Congratulations on the success of Pimp My Salad’s gross sales exceeding $1M - can you share some insights on how you’ve achieved such impressive growth in a relatively short time frame?
It is important always think about your end customer. We love our customer and they always come first. So, with whatever we do, we look at the relevance for our customer, and how we can improve it. At the same time, we do like to keep our processes in the business simple and effective. We often think – “if it’s too complicated, there must be a better way!”
What have been some of your proudest moments as the founder of Pimp My Salad?
I always love to see our products in stores on the shelf or watch how people eat our products. It makes me truly happy to be on this mission to make healthy eating easy, delicious, and accessible for people.
Can you tell us about the process of sourcing ingredients and working with local organic farmers and suppliers for your products?
We used to work with local farmers a lot when we have been making our kale chips as we have been buying locally grown kale. It was such a nice experience to visit the farms and watch how the kale grows. We always work with ethical suppliers and trace all our ingredients from the source.
What do you hope to achieve through Pimp My Salad in the long term, both for the business and for the wider community?
We want to make healthy eating easy and enjoyable for all people. We want as many people as possible to have access to our products everywhere where they normally shop. It’s been my dream to make Pimp My Salad a healthy pantry staple – just like salt & pepper, to make healthy, nutritious eating part of everyday life for as many people as possible.
You were nominated for the Innovation Award at the International Food Expo 2023 in London and were a finalist for the Nexty Awards at Expo West USA in 2019 - how does it feel to receive this recognition for your work?
As a small local business, we were very excited to be recognised globally. The trust we received from our customers – and being recognised globally – makes us incredibly proud and grateful.
Pimp My Salad is currently seeking equity crowdfunding through Equitise - what are your plans for the future of the business, and how will this investment support your goals?
We are excited to grow the company to fulfill our mission making healthy eating easy and exciting. For that, we are planning to increase our distribution network by strengthening our existing collaborations in Australia and by establishing partnerships with incredible retail partners – locally and internationally – to make our products easily accessible to everyone. We are very excited to explore new markets, like the UAE, New Zealand, Ireland, and parts of Europe. Along with all of this, we will continue to provide better education and exciting recipes for our customers, showing just how delicious, fun, and simple healthy eating can be.
How has being a Byron local inspired you to live a healthy lifestyle and focus on food choices?
Byron Bay is the best place for healthy food brands to be born and grown. The integrity of businesses and the variety of high quality produce you can find here is exceptional. We love the variety of weekly local markets as well as connecting with like-minded local business owners. Byron is quite creative and entrepreneurial, always looking out to make our lives’ healthier, easier, and more sustainable. We love that and it really continues to inspire us.
What role does community play in your lifestyle, business and family?
We have been always having such a good support from locally community. When we started the company, we have been doing lots of local markets, selling our products there and we really appreciate all support and feedback we have received. We actually started our business at Byron Bay market and local people were the first who believed in our brand and helped us to grow it.
To accelerate their growth and assist in Pimp My Salad’s goals coming to life, the brand is partnering with Equitise, an equity crowdfunding platform to raise up to AU$500k. To be kept up to date with the raise and for exclusive early access to invest when the deal opens, you can express your interest.
DISCLAIMER: Like any investment, Crowd-Sourced Funding (CSF) is risky. Investors may lose their money and the business may not achieve its objectives. You should consider the CSF offer document and the general CSF risk warning contained in the offer document in deciding whether to apply under the offer.